Terence Nahar has built his career on designing liability driven investment
strategies for buy-side firms using
derivatives in a range of asset classes.

The products he uses within these
strategies have undergone significant
change since the financial crisis, with
regulators completely reforming the over-the-counter derivatives market.

Heading up derivatives first at Royal
London Asset Management and then
Scottish Widows Investment Partnership
– which has now become Aberdeen Asset
Management – Nahar has navigated these
firms through significant times of change.

Staying on top of widespread change
is tough, but Nahar insists that there is
much more to his role than just reacting
to the effects of regulatory change.

“It is easy to focus on regulatory
requirements, but our client base is
exposed to much more than just changes
in the regulatory environment,” he explains.

“The market is changing just by
the fact that it is a dynamic market.

So opportunities and threats presentthemselves on a continuous basis.”Terence Nahar rose through the ranksat investment banks in the early 2000s,Nahar with roles at Deutsche Bank andGoldman Sachs, along with a spell atconsultancy McKinsey & Co in Amsterdam.

Throughout his career his client base
has consisted of mostly pension funds and
insurance companies in the UK and the
Netherlands. In that time, Nahar has seen
the market’s use of derivatives change
significantly, along with his own role.

“Pension trustees have become
much more sophisticated in terms of
their understanding of derivatives,” he
says. “Take the term ‘swap’ for example,
they wouldn’t really know where to
place it. Nowadays they fully understand
what it is, how it can be used to de-risk
a fund and they are much more open
to other products being used in terms
of structuring and designing de-risk
solutions.

“Liquidity has reduced significantly,
primarily on the back of regulatory push-back in terms of derivatives used and
requiring less leverage being applied
in the system, initial margin, variation
requirements etc. but I wouldn’t put it all
down to regulations. As I said that would
be a gross amplification of what has
happened in the market.” n

Tim Meggs

Head of trading

FULCRUM ASSET MANAGEMENT

Heading up the trading desk at boutique asset manager
Fulcrum, Tim Meggs leads a team
which has doubled its assets under
management in the two years he
has held the role.

His team handles the trading
flow for Fulcrum’s strategies and
focuses on crunching execution data
to improve performance.

At Fulcrum, Meggs also acts as a
strategy manager for the multi-asset
volatility fund; this involves strategy
implementation and evolution along
with quantitative research.

The strategy is systematic,
and therefore doesn’t require the
traditional portfolio manager role,
however Meggs’ role is to oversee
and assume responsibility for the
strategy.

Armed with years of derivatives
and quantitative trading experience,
Meggs also has a Certificate in
Quantitative Finance to go with his
Master of Philosophy degree from
the University of Oxford.

Meggs has leaned on his years
of experience in derivatives trading
which tracks back to 2004, where
he was an equity exotics derivatives
trader at CIBC World Markets.

From there he became an
executive director, although still
involved in quantitative cross-asset
derivatives trading. His duties
shifted to trading and positioning
a large cross-asset exotic options
book at the investment bank.

He also focused on a range of
derivatives, trading equities,
commodities, rates and FX. n